United States 2.0 

During the debate my friend Lance Knobel wrote a post wondering if perhaps Hillary Clinton was conceding the nomination to Barack Obama.

By the end of the debate, I too thought that's what had happened.

Maybe we can see our way to something wonderful, instead of a continued struggle. She gets to be a major figure in the US Senate supporting a Democratic President. Not bad. Maybe she's the new Majority Leader.

Maybe the goal isn't just to win the White House but to get a strong majority in both houses.

A woman Speaker and a woman Majority Leader.

And a black President. What a way to roll out USA 2.0.

PS: I'd like to see Obama pick Senator Jim Webb of Virginia for vice-president.

PPS: Webb gave the Democratic response to the 2007 State of the Union.

Campaign conference call MP3s, day 2 

Lots of leads for the MP3s of campaign conference calls after yesterday's piece, but so far not one actual MP3 has been squeezed out of MSM or the campaigns.

I made official inquiries through the Obama and Clinton websites, no response yet. At least the Obama website seemed to understand that I wasn't offering to stuff envelopes or drive people to the polls.

Hillary explained, in an email response, that she gets a lot of email and can't respond to each one individually. Then she listed all the ways I could help her campaign, including giving her money. That's a pretty incompetent way to respond to a press inquiry.

One professional reporter explained that they don't publish press releases so why should they make the MP3s of the conference calls available. Oy. They clearly don't understand that as voters we might have an interest in unfiltered access to the actual words of the campaign. It never occurs to them, apparently, that not every voter sees their spin as a total value-add.

Four years from now we'll look back at this in amazement that there was a day when campaigns hid their words and ideas behind the filters of the press.

Anyway, until we have a regularly updating feed with MP3s of the campaign conference calls, I won't stop beating the drum.

Steven Mays: "I'd love to hear these calls, raw and unedited."

Where did the 35 years come from? 

William King asks how Hillary Clinton justifies her claim that she has 35 years experience in government.

It boggles my mind how Hillary came up with a grand total of 35 years of political experience. I know she has seven years of being a senator. Now she has never served in a political position, or a public office, prior to that. Neither has she had a high profile job in the government: she wasn't a secretary of any department. So where has she gotten the other 28 years from? That I would truly like to know.

Where did Dave go? 

Over time, I'm using Twitter more and more, and posting less to the weblog. I'm still posting lots of links, but you have to follow me on Twitter to get them. I'm looking at ways to cross-post some of them here.

I'm also considering ways to centralize communication in the FlickrFan community, which is growing nicely. I'm concerned because mail lists almost always turn into platforms for people who don't use the product to sneer at it. So I'm looking for some way to strike a balance. I like hearing from users, but I don't have the time to deal with others.

If you have questions about the podcatcher, for now, please post them here:

http://codecasting.org/podcatcher/00001.html

Thanks!